100 Silver Bullets

Let’s hear it for comic book vets taking a bite outta originality. New York gangsters with Tommy guns and spats go up against Appalachian hillbillies and their missing teeth for remarkably distilled hooch during Prohibition. And oh yeah, there’s a werewolf or three out there on the prowl going all Gary Brandner because, man, this is comics!

Brian Azzarello excels – in short bursts – when working within the crime genre. His plots are quick, at times convenient, and his dialogue rat-a-tat fun as his work on Jonny Double and the first two-ish years of 100 Bullets can attest to. With Moonshine, his double entendre is as fun as his characters are cliché, completely fitting the bill for an Edward Robinson meets Lon Chaney, Jr mash-up. Eduardo Risso is never finer then when drawing a femme fatale or a Ford Model A, and he gets the chance to showcase both, along with a bunch of shadows, negative space, and man, that full moon, throughout this first volume.

Moonshine tells the tale of Lou Pirlo and how he gets caught in the world of, well, moonshine and, in a way, silver bullets. Written in a noir style, Lou quickly realizes he is in trouble and completely out of his New York state of mind. He’s drowning while gulping down every last drop of that nectar. Azzarello builds on the mystery while Risso paints trees of orange and rivers of red – along with the requisite shoot-em-ups.

Yeah. Good stuff. Tons of fun that will hopefully never become a show on HBO.